Denizens and Dragons

by Kevin Partner

  He scanned the room, his eyes rolling of their own accord as if he was in the last stages of the worst bender in recorded history. He was in a room that looked as though it was dug out of rock. It was dimly lit by a pair of embrasured lanterns and, as his eyes adjusted, he could see that it was richly furnished. A painting hung on the wall - Humunculus. So, this was the room from which the Faerie King had tormented him, the one from which his mother had escaped. Anger flared in Chortley’s soul, a rage that he bit down on. His time for revenge would come. Caution was the watchword for now.

  The palace was silent. It was the sort of all-pervading silence typical of tombs. The sort of complete lack of sound that politicians produce when asked which of their manifesto promises they have actually kept. It was a total auditory vacuum. The place was empty, Chortley would stake his life on it. So, knowing that time was short, he did exactly that and, abandoning any attempt at concealing himself, he swung the door of the chamber open and plunged into the darkness on the other side.

  There was a balcony on the far wall, little more than a window cut into a rock corridor that disappeared into the gloom to left and right. Chortley edged to the corner of the balcony and peered out. And down. Onto a dark plain that was just beginning to show the first signs of an approaching dawn. Though he couldn’t make it out when looking directly at it, he had the impression that it was a valley, enclosed on all sides like a natural amphitheatre. The sort of place an army might gather. He guessed that this had been the muster point for the invasion last year - but there was no sign of movement down below now. No camps, no marching soldiers. The whole place had the air of abandonment about it, as if all the action were taking place elsewhere.

  Chortley knew he’d have to follow somehow, even though he had no way of knowing where Bently had gone. For all his fear that he might find himself in the middle of an enemy army when he’d come through the portal, this desolation was even worse. It was bad enough to be caught up in the middle of a battle to save your world, but to know it was happening without him was even worse. What was the point of a universe he wasn’t the centre of?

  For a moment, he stood in the high corridor. A pitiful zephyr did nothing to rid the place of the smell of must and mould, in fact it might have been the source of it. He could see little of the corridors beyond the pale illumination of the balcony - even if Bently had left any traces of mud or grass, Chortley wouldn’t spot them. But the grass had been wet on the other side of the portal.

  Chortley dropped to his knees and swept his hands across the floor left and right. Nothing. He spun round to face the direction the other corridor ran in and swept again. His left hand caught something just as he was about to give up. The icy touch of wetness. He crouched down, using his fingers to establish its extent. Yes, it was about foot sized and foot shaped. Then, leaning forward, he found its mate a yard or so ahead of the first. So, the goblin had been running. It must have been him; Chortley would have wagered money that the palace had been deserted for too long for these to be the footprints of anyone else. And, in any case, everything about this place spoke of desiccation. It was a mummified world - a world that hungered for the richness of his.

  Chortley stood and looked along the corridor. He had no choice but to follow - to run blindly into the darkness in the hope he would blunder across Bently or some clue to where he’d gone. And the little shit had better hope he didn’t succeed. Gritting his teeth, Chortley Fitzmichael, Lord of the Brightworld, ran into the night.

  Chapter 35

  BILL WAS ALSO RUNNING. INTO the dawn. The prickly cold of a misty morning brushed past his cheeks as he tore through the grasslands followed by the echoing cry of a fearful, vengeful mother dragon.

  Luckily, the heedless trampling of the robots made for an easy path to follow so he ran as quickly as he could, glad of the years he’d spent on his feet in the woods, grimacing as the skin on the soles of his shoeless feet began to rip.

  Beryl’s cries grew louder as the downlands gave way to the foothills of rocky country. There was the road he’d walked along with Stingzlikeabee - it had been only a matter of days ago but felt as if it belonged to another existence entirely. Sebaceous scampered along the verge beside him and it was the little lizard that brought Bill up short by darting into the road.

  “Hey!” Bill cried, “I almost trod on you. Be careful.”

  Sebaceous had his fingers on his lips. “Sshhh friend Bill! I hear something aheads.”

  Bill held his breath, closed his eyes and listened. Behind them he could hear the dragon’s mournful cries - it seemed to him that they were further off. And then in the quiet in-between, metallic voices drifted through along the mist-shrouded road.

  “We is near the entrance to the portal cave,” Sebaceous whispered. “It is the king, he is speaking. Let us sneak closer.”

  Bending low, Bill crept along the road like a Neanderthal with lumbago, his knuckles almost grazing along the cobblestones. He skirted the edge of the path until, rising out of the mist, he could see the sheer rockface that, he knew, housed the portal chamber. Out of the chamber, a voice echoed.

  “My friends and faithful servants,” said the voice of the Humunculus robot, “here, in this box, I hold the source of all power and the means for us to be rehomed. I tell you, we shall find only the strongest, the most beautiful, bodies to house our brave souls and, when we are so attired, we shall join our great armies in taking revenge on all those that wronged us.”

  Bill strained to listen, his heart pounding as he heard the future of his world being discussed.

  “But before we can be so revenged, we must beat down the pitiful resistance of the Brightworld. My armies gather in my world and, if he has fulfilled his mission, we shall be met by my faithful servant who has repaired the portal into the Brightworld where I was so unfortunately defeated last time. And he will bring me the gift of the great staff that controls the machines of Minus.” The voice was growing in intensity now, as if becoming more and more certain of victory as it spoke.

  In Bill’s mind’s eye he saw the great machine-men stomping through the doughnut stone and onto the chalklands of Hemlock country. He saw them making for the farm and, purely out of maliciousness, tearing it to pieces, stock and stone, and killing all they could trap. Could the witches face them? With a goblin army at their back? The country would disappear under a black tide and the conquest of the Brightworld would begin. But surely not? Even were Fitzmichael County to fall, there was the rest of the world. And, unbidden, into his mind came images of armies pouring from a dozen maggot holes torn into the border between dimensions. But how could that be? What was he seeing? Somehow he knew that, if the source of power in that box were let loose, the barriers between worlds would weaken and his world would go dark.

  “... follow me!” There was a cheer that reverberated out of the chamber, a chilling, metallic, cheer that froze Bill to the core.

  There was the sound of thumping feet receding and, one by one, quite suddenly popping out. Bill leapt forward as the last after-echo died and stood before the portal. It was nothing more than a gently shimmering layer on the rock-face and yet Bill dared not jump through just yet in case he found himself in the midst of a mob of angry robots.

  Sebaceous looked up at him from the floor of the dimly lit cave. “I go, friend Bill. I too small to be noticed.”

  Bill opened his mouth to object but the lizard gathered himself and, with a single leap, disappeared into the wall.

  #

  Bill was dozing in a dusty corner of the cave when, with nothing more than a light plop, Sebaceous reappeared.

  “How long?” Bill mumbled as he came around. “I mean, how long have you been? How many hours have I been asleep?”

  Sebaceous chuckled. “I have been gone just minutes,” he said, “they was all there when I jumped through. Lucky not to be spotted, I was. I hid in corner until they left. Not long. We must hurry now.”

  Just as Bill got to his feet, Beryl’s cries, which ha
d seemed so distant, now appeared to be coming from much too nearby for comfort. He quickly dusted his jacket, brought some precautionary fire into his hands, stepped up to the portal and through.

  It was dark on the other side, predictably enough. He was in the shallow cave in which he’d warmed the draconi and become “rock heater” or whatever they’d called him. When he reached the mouth of the cave, he looked out on the rocky landscape which was illuminated by the reluctant sunlight of this world. It was a scene of greys and browns with the occasional splash of the sort of red you don’t want to investigate too closely.

  The machines were nowhere to be seen, but their heavy trampling was obvious enough. Bill scampered down the mountain path, carefully picking his way around the largest and sharpest rocks, his bare feet protesting as he followed his enemy.

  #

  Chortley found them first. It was what passed for midday in this dim place when he crested the lip of the valley that ran parallel to the palace. He’d found the goblin army and it was huge, occupying, as it did, the entire dried up riverbed that ran along the bottom. It was a mass of blacks and greys with the occasional flash of silver and it stood stock still as if waiting for something.

  Concealing himself behind a rock with a convenient crack through its centre, Chortley settled himself down to watch. He couldn’t think of anything else to do and had long since abandoned hope of catching Bently. The hobgoblin knew this world like the back of his claw whereas Chortley was a fish out of water, but he knew that this was where Bently had headed.

  Chortley watched for some time when, quite suddenly, a cheer erupted. There, on the other side of the valley, a figure had appeared. It was squarish and walked with a mechanical gait though, right now, it stood unmoving, silhouetted against the sky as other figures joined it to take positions to its left and right, slightly below it. He had no doubt who it was. He’d seen the machine Humunculus and the suits Bill and Brianna had worn and he knew it was the fairie king who stood waving at the army below.

  It was morbid fascination and a lack of anything better to do that led Chortley to remain there. After a while, he hauled himself up and crept along the ridge, flitting from boulder to boulder and keeping himself below the skyline as much as possible. He felt compelled to hear what the king said, even though he knew he would hate it.

  #

  Bill watched the familiar portly figure as it lumbered from rock to rock, about as inconspicuous as a fart in a broom cupboard. When he’d first spotted movement on the skyline he’d rubbed his eyes several times and squinted until he’d been certain that it was, indeed, his brother by a faerie mother. What had brought him to the Darkworld he could hardly imagine, but his news was unlikely to be good.

  When Chortley caught sight of Bill he froze in plain view of anyone in the valley that might have been looking in his direction. Bill was just about to dart out and grab him when he snapped out of it and scrambled to join his brother.

  “What the hells are you doing here?” they said.

  “You look like shit,” Chortley said, his eyes scanning Bill from his greasy-haired, bearded head to his filthy, shoeless, feet.

  Bill shrugged. “Well, I’ve been to the back of Beyond. And don’t even get me started on Beryl.”

  “Beryl?”

  “A dragon. As I said, I don’t want to talk about her. She’s on the other side of the portal and can’t get through, so I think I’m safe enough here.” And then he thought about what he’d just said and burst out laughing.

  Chortley put his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “You’ve had a rough time and I reckon it’s cost you your marbles.

  “Maybe,” Bill said, smiling, “but then we’re both sitting here in an alien world spying on a goblin army led by wood and metal machines inhabited by criminal souls. Frankly, I reckon that would be enough to send anyone over the edge.”

  Chortley was about to answer when, above the whistling of the dry wind, above the murmuring of the army below, above the rumbling of Bill’s empty stomach came a cry of sheer jubilation and triumph.

  It was the voice of the Faerie King, recognisable even in its metallic form. “Bently!”

  And there, scampering across the plain, was the figure of the king’s most faithful servant. In his hand he held a staff. Bill squinted into the noisome gloom as the army parted to admit Bently who, on reaching his master, threw himself onto the ground and grovelled.

  The Humunculus robot grabbed the staff and, without another word, turned away to where, on a small rock standing on the valley floor, sat the box. The figures gathered around it had, by order or simple self-preservation, formed a ring twenty yards away with the box in its centre. Humunculus stomped into the circle and raised his staff high with a cry of joy.

  “People of the Darkworld, faithful servants all, I have here the two most powerful objects in any of the three worlds. See how the staff yearns to be united with the source of magic contained in this box and, when the two come together, there will be nothing we cannot achieve and none to stand against us in our revenge.”

  Bill plugged his ears against the roar of approval as the army and assembled machines celebrated. He could see the staff, held high and glowing. He’d experienced the power of the staff as it amplified and concentrated his own magic and he only dared imagine what would happen if the source in that box was as powerful as the elfs believed.

  “By the gods,” Chortley said, “we’ve had it. That bastard’s won.”

  Bill swung back behind the rock to sit next to his brother. “What can we do? The only way to stop him is to destroy that box and we wouldn’t get close before they hacked us down.”

  They sat in the lee of the rock as the cacophony of triumph poured around them. “What power is there to oppose a goblin army and a band of mechanicals?” Chortley muttered.

  Closing his eyes, Bill searched his mind for the answer. He wasn’t yet ready to surrender to despair even though that seemed the only path left to him.

  “The only silver lining to this particular cloud is that, in an hour or two, Ignis will blow up the stone portal and they won’t be able to get into our world that way, mind you, neither will we.”

  “The portal was rebuilt? How did that happen?”

  Chortley sighed. “My sister. Played for a fool by that hobgoblin. Well, we’ve outsmarted him this time, but they’ll find another way in. I’m glad we buried the portal in Minus’ labyrinth.”

  “They can be rebuilt,” Bill said, “and, after all, that’s where Humunculus wants to go in the end. Perhaps, when he finds the way through the stones shut, he’ll head straight to the laboratory, find a body to inhabit and seek his revenge later. With a second goblin army to back him up.”

  “Do you think Rasha would side with him?”

  Bill shrugged. “I doubt he’d have a choice in the matter. No, we mustn’t allow them into our world, once they cross over there will be no stopping them. Even the armies of Varma will be no match against the horde he commands and the shit-storm of magic he’ll unleash.”

  “And that box is the key? What’s inside?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” Bill said. “The elfs say it contains the source of all magic in the three worlds - including the magic of the elementals and that of the staff. My powers are but a faint echo of what the source could achieve. It was guarded by a dragon for centuries.”

  Chortley’s eyebrows threatened to push his hairline off the back of his skull. “What? A real dragon? How did Humunculus get hold of it then?”

  “I stole it,” Bill said, his wretchedness overwhelming him.

  “You did WHAT?” Chortley bellowed.

  Bill turned away. “I took it from the dragon.” A vision of Beryl exploded in his head and he heard her pathetic, mournful, cries as she searched for her egg. Another vision of her emerging from a tunnel that should have been far too small swept in like a default Powerpoint animation.

  And then he had it.

  “I have an idea,” Bill said. “It’s
desperate and, in all likelihood, fatal, do what you can to delay them until I return.”

  Chortley grabbed his arm as he went. “Where are you going?”

  “To find me a dragon.” Bill pulled away and scampered back the way he’d come.

  Falling back against the rock as the cheers echoed around the valley, Chortley watched his brother go, before he realised exactly what Bill had said. “Hold on,” he muttered, “how the hells am I supposed to delay them?”

  “Oh we can help you there,” said a voice from the next rock.

  “Aye, it’s time someone got a leatherin’” said another.

  From somewhere nearby, hidden eyes narrowed.

  Chapter 36

  BILL RAN, HEEDLESS OF THE pain in his feet. Sebaceous, who’d remained hidden since they’d emerged into the Darkworld, could be heard grumbling and moaning as he was tossed around in Bill’s pocket.

  “You is crazzzzy!” his muffled voice called.

  “Quite probably,” Bill managed between pants. He was a man (evidence: the beard) with a plan (evidence: single minded determination), though it was, he knew, probably the stupidest plan since Herbert “No Arms” McMasters attempted to break the world record for the “fastest cannon reload”.

  Bill burst into the cave containing the portal and leaned against the wall, wheezing. “Look,” he said, mainly to give his lungs a chance to catch up with his brain, “the only thing that can stop the king and his army is dragon fire.”